A Week in Writing #615 - Blackmail (Second Draft) Done

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

Well, the headline is that I've finished a second draft of Blackmail. It's the latest in a series of unpublished novels I've written with main character J.D. Barrister, a Los Angeles based private detective. In this book, J.D. is recently married to Dr. Leanne Wilson, who is also two months pregnant. They attend a fundraiser for victims of the L.A. fires at the home of her ex-husband, actor Terry Wilson. Their marriage ended due to his infidelity. It is at the event that J.D. finds out that Terry, preying on her desire to make him happy, took a series of nude in public photographs of her before and during their marriage. He claims there are two volumes of photos and he offers to give one back each time J.D. does a job for him, rather than publish them, which would be embarrassing and bad publicity for her practice.

The first job is to find a woman that it turns out Terry had underage sex with a few years prior following a convention in Anaheim. J.D. manages to track her down to a small town in Michigan, where she's attending college. They meet and he finds out Terry has been paying for $20,000 a month to keep quiet about the incident. Making contact with her gives J.D. the first volume of photos, but to get the second one, Terry wants J.D. to kill her and record the killing.

I don't know how that sounds to anyone, but if you have comments, please feel free to leave them. It's currently, 88,451 words long and I'm going to give it another go through, as I've changed some actions and want to be sure they all line up.

But rather than start in on that right away, I picked up another story I had started. J.D. is hired to find a runaway who has been missing for 15 years. I was about 20,000 words into it before I decided to work on Blackmail. It doesn't have a title yet. I've started reading through it, finding a half started chapter in the middle of what I've written. I think I know what I was intending to do, but it's been several months.

We ended up having to watch our scheduled Friday night movie on Saturday night, Mortal Kombat, prior to seeing Mortal Kombat II, today. Not a good movie for me to review, so nothing new from me this week. I did finish my review of The Wind, if you're curious, but no date for release. The Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked this week is Paul's Second Opinion Toy Story. Hint: there's going to be more Toy Story content in the weeks to come on that blog.

Spent an evening resizing pages for the next two issues of Powers Squared. It's not work I like to have to do, but someone does. We still need to file for copyrights, perhaps next week, and then decide on a release date. We did hear back from the Copyright office about their turning down our months-old application, can we can simply register them separately. It made sense to us, but we had to ask.

Work continues on the next issue of the book, "Aroma Therapy, Part 1". Our artist is working on page 11, so I'm hoping her work wraps up in a couple of months and the issue will hopefully be finished two months after that. Our colorist is about a month behind the artist and the letterer a month after that.

Our podcast this week, was "(The Rest of) The Fourth Doctor". We had very recently finished watching Season 2 of the Tom Baker series, which was the only one we hadn't seen. This gave us a chance to finish off our discussion from before. You can listen to it on our website, watch it on our twitch.tv channel for the next few days, or wait and watch it on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared) at 2:30 pm PDT on Wednesday. Our guest next week is comic book writer David Blake Lucarelli (Tinseltown, The Children's Vampire Hunting Brigade). We'll go live at 6 pm PDT next Friday at twitch.tv/powerssquared. Be there and Be Squared.

This is newsletter week, so a lot of my attention will be putting together The Hound Dogs' Howl. You can always subscribe, for FREE, at https://mailchi.mp/9b9f918f79af/m1hbvbxiyn. It comes out on the first Sunday of every month, and is different from this blog, if you've ever wondered.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week.

A Week in Writing #610 - All That's Left is the Shredding

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

On Monday, I finally finished going through my notes on the draft for Blackmail. One of the results is that I've got 409 pages to shred, a task I have not yet faced. The word count ended up being 88,940 when I was done with that. I've since started to going through it on the computer, as a second run through. And I'm finding missed words or awkward phrasing this time around. This is somewhat slower, as I don't really like reading on the computer. I'm a little over a quarter of the way through it again, and the current word count is up to 89,018.

Also, on Monday, I finished some edits on a script for a future Powers Squared story arc. I haven't sent it yet for more revisions, but it's always good to have someone read it and make comments. In this case, the reader is my co-writer Paul.

And on Monday, we gave final approval for the lineart for page 3 for the next issue of Powers Squared, "Aroma Therapy," which is currently set as issues 30 and 31. Our artist is doing two pages a week, which is a good pace and we're now working on page 5. 

Trevor, this week, also finished lettering 8 more pages of what should be Issue #29. Currently, our colorist is caught up, but that should change next month.

Our podcast this week was "Record Store Day Memories," a look back on this past year's RSD, including items exclusive to RSD and items we found on sale- at the time. The three of us, Trevor, Paul and I also divulged our greated RSD Exclusive find. If you'd like to watch it on our Twitch channel for the next few days, you can watch it here. It's available in audio now and you can listen here. And if you want to wait for YouTube, it goes up on our channel (@powerssquared) on Wednesday at 2:30 pm PDT.

This coming week is Free Comic Book Day, and we'll be doing a special, "What's In My Bag?" sometime on Saturday. TBD, but it will be on our YouTube channel. This is traditionally a two-parter; we do a follow up the next week, talking about what we've read.

I finished a review for Blondie of the Follies, a Marion Davies film that I happened across. As always, not sure when it will come out. The Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked, was Trevor's review of Mercy, a sci-fi thriller, that came out earlier this year. We watched it on Prime Video, rather than in the theater.

I looked at the calendar and next weekend will be time for The Hounds' Howl newsletter, so I have a feeling that will be a priority for me, as well as trying to get more done on Blackmail. If you're curious about the newsletter, you can always sign up here. It's FREE and you get a digital copy of Issue #1.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you here next week.

A Week in Writing #604 - Blackmail and Reviews

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

Like everyone, I've been adjusting to Daylight Savings Time, but I think the transition is almost over.

I've been spending my evenings, which is when I write, or try to, editing Blackmail. This is my favorite part of the writing experience, printing the book fifty pages or so at a time and sitting down with a pencil, reading the book aloud and making changes and notes. I still have several pages to go and after that more work to do.

But that's not all I've been doing this week.

On Friday, our podcast was about TFCon, the Transformers convention my sons were planning on attending. The podcast is still available to watch here for the next few days, available to listen to here and will be up on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared) on Wednesday at 2:30 pm. The boys also approached a couple of voice actors connected with Robots in Disguise who might be upcoming guests, so stay tuned. 

I finished reviews for both Blithe Spirit and Hypocrites (1915), a silent film by pioneering filmmaker Lois Weber. As always, not sure when it will go up. But there were plenty of reviews this past week on Trophy Unlocked. On Monday, was Paul's review of Hoppers. On Tuesday was Trevor's review of Star Fox 64 3D, followed on Thursday by his review of Star Fox: Assault. Saturday saw his review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.

There was a lot going on with Powers Squared this week. We're wrapping up Issue #29, getting ready to release issue #27 and about to start work on issue #30. We'll be talking about Issue 27, "Life on the Road, A Powers Squared Story."

My plan for next week is to work more on Blackmail and see where that leads me.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week.

A Week in Writing #580 - Birthday, Birthday, Birthday

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

There is a three week period, starting in late September, when we celebrate four birthdays in my family of four. This is that week, starting with mine on Thursday and my sons' today. That doesn't mean I took the week off, but the output might not be as great as it could be.

Paul and I took a nostalgic look back at the videos on our YouTube channel that had garnered the most views on this week's On the Air with Powers Squared podcast. The videos cover a variety of the topics our videos cover, from interviews with other creators but also comic book clubs, Who is...? videos for our characters, taste tests, vlogs about SDCC, etc. I'll grant you it's a little meta, but it is what it is. You can listen to it here or watch it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday after 2:30 pm PDT here.

I did write two reviews this week, one for Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, which we watched on my birthday, and The Invisible Man Returns for October, which we watched on Friday night. We're still watching The Batman serial, as well. I would imagine The Grand Finale will be up soon. Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review this week was Paul's review of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle and this week a surprise Sunday morning review by Paul of Elio.

We published two books this week, "The Great Escape", #26 from Powers Squared, and "Vivienne", #7 of Trevor's book, The Blade of Miracles. Both are available in print and digital through The Campus Store on our website. Shout out to Ka-Blam and their platform Indy Planet. We were having issues with the .pdf for "The Great Escape", but they managed to get it up on Indy Planet the same day they got the revised .pdf. I really appreciate their extra effort to make it work. I also want to add that the black border around the cover, rather than white, was their idea.

And, as if that wasn't enough, we submitted our third trade to ComicsPlus by Library Pass. This one includes issues 10-14, The "What's in a Name" through "The Imposter" storylines. Not sure when that will be available.

Spoke to our local comic book store about doing a signing and selling our trades there. Went well, but more to come on that.

I'm honestly to beyond the point of no return with our current artist, who is about two months overdue. I did receive pages, but a week and a day after they were supposed to be turned in. It's really adversely affecting Powers Squared and a change is in the offing.

We applied today to table at the Golden State Fur Con in 2026, as we think there is furry appeal in both The Blade of Miracles and to an extent, Powers Squared. More to come on that as well.

I managed to do some work on Blackmail. Almost to 58,000 words. I completed one chapter and started on the next one. I believe I'm entering what would be called the third act. I think I need to do some research before I get too much futher.

Next week, it's newsletter time again, so that will definitely play into whatever else I do.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #578 - Never too Late

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

Just to show that it's never too late to hear back from an agent, I received an email on Monday, September 8, for a query I sent on May 8, and which I wrote off as DNR on July 8. But that doesn't mean the agent was done with me. It should come as no surprise that it wasn't a request for more pages or even a personalized rejection. Just a form response:

"Thank you so much for giving me a chance to consider your work. Unfortunately, I don’t believe I’m the right person to represent it effectively. Publishing is such a subjective industry; so, please don’t be discouraged. I wish you the absolute best of luck finding an agent who can represent your work with the enthusiasm it deserves."

Not necessarily worth waiting for, but it does show some agents do respond, it's just not in a timely manner.

No queries this week, again. I'm hoping to learn some things soon and will get back into the query game after that.

I did work some on Blackmail this week, though I'm rewriting the newest chapter I'd written, and I've added a few things in what I had already written. One of the things I like about writing is seeing something current and make it relate to what I'm writing. I came across such a story this week, and while I won't name names, it involved two atheletes, from different sports, who had a relationship. It was some of the things the woman said about the man fit in with my book, so I made a point of using the spirit of how she described it, though I made sure not to quote her. So, the word count is now over 56,000, but I am making progress.

Had a little issue with the next issue of Powers Squared. We got back a proof and there was dialogue credited to the wrong character, an easy fix, and why you get proofs, but I wasn't sure if I should delay the issue by a month. I changed my mind this week and it may not be available everywhere on the first day, but that's life.

So, there'll be two issues coming out on the 24th: Issue #7 of The Blade of Miracles and #26 of Powers Squared. I had intended to release four issues of Powers Squared this year, but production issues with #29 have me rethinking that.

Trophy Unlocked hit 1700 reviews this week, with Trevor's review of Look Back having the honors. On Wednesday, Paul put up a review of ENA: Dream BBQ Chapter 1 - Lonely Door. Saturday night was upheaved this week because Paul was judging at a Yu-Gi-Oh! Regional, but we went to see a 60th anniversary showing of The Sound of Music today, and I'll probably be the one reviewing it.

Speaking of Paul's judging, our Friday podcast was about his previous experience with doing that at a previous Regional. I know I learned a few things during the show. You can listen to it here, watch it  on our twitch channel for a few more days, or watch it on our You Tube channel (@powerssquared) here Wednesday after 2:30 pm PDT.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week.

A Week in Writing #566 - Gearing Up for Summer (New Issues)

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

By gearing up for the summer, I'm not talking about repacking the tents but rather working on what needs to be done during the summer months ahead. We took a step in that direction this weekend with some podcasts we shot.

Our ode to the start of summer was the Friday podcast, or "Jaws 50th Anniversary Sharktacular", that we did on Friday night. With the official start of summer comes the summer blockbuster and many credit Jaws with being the first. Paul, Trevor and I spent the time talking about the film, and our impressions, etc. You can listen to it here or wait to watch it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday at 2:30 PDT here (more podcasts below).

Separate from that, but connected, was a special Friday morning review of Jaws by Paul on Trophy Unlocked published to commorate the anniversary. And even the Saturday Morning Review was Jaws-themed, with Trevor's review of the game, Jaws Unleashed (2006), in which you are the shark.

And if that wasn't enough, we shot two more podcasts on Saturday afternoon with Julia Canon. The first one we did won't go up until the 4th of July. We do an occassional Comic Book Club and not everyone could make the meeting. The four of us discussed Usagi Yojimbo Volume 39: Ice and Snow by Stan Sakai. So, forget about that one for a couple of weeks.

It's the second one that will go up immediately; a preview of the two books SRCC Press is releasing on Wednesday, Powers Squared Issue #25 and The Blade of Miracles #4. Julia was part of the former but not of the latter, so there are really two podcasts put together with some clever editing by Paul. It's called: "[Secret Episode] OAPS #304 - SRCC Press Double Feature! PSQ #25 + TBOM #4 Preview". This is also available to listen to here and will also be available on our YouTube channel on Wednesday but at 2:31 pm PDT.

I would be remiss not to talk more about both issues. Powers Squared #25, "Yuki-Onna" was written by Paul as a companion to Powers Squared #24, "Gashadokuro", which was written by Trevor. Just as that first issue dealt with Eli on his own fighting an evil yokai, "Yuki-Onna" finds Marty in a life or death battle with a yokai known to suck the life force from her victims. The artwork was by artist Julia Canon, colors were by Jennifer Moreno with Trevor doing the lettering.

The Blade of Miracles is Trevor's 12-part epic adventure loosely based on the Arthurian legend. In the fourth issue, "The Black Knight, Part 1," Lancelot returns to his hometown of Benwick in search of Excalibur, only to find it in ruin. Who would commit such a terrible deed and why? In addition to writing, Trevor also illustrated and lettered the issue with Paul serving as editor.

Both issues will be available starting on June 25 through The Campus Store in both print and digital formats.

No new review from me this week. On Friday night, we watched Mission: Impossible 2, which I wasn't going to review, but because there was a lot written about its similarities to the Alfred Hitchcock film, Notorious, we rewatched that film. I had reviewed the film on the blog about 14 years ago, and I'll stand by what I wrote at the time. I did go back and add some images that we weren't adding to reviews at the time.

About 1500 more words this week on Blackmail, so for anyone counting, it's up to 43,806 words.

One new query this week, and while none have come back as rejected, one is about to DNR itself in a couple of days. They all go ripe after 8 weeks and this one is about to hit that mark. Would love to hear from an agent out there.

Well, that about does it for me. One note, I'm spending time with my wife's family this weekend, so next week's may be delayed a day, so bear with me. Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week.